- Author: Mary E. Reed
- Contributor: Roberta Cook
Early spring can be an invigorating time of year, with lengthening days, blooming daffodils and fruit trees (and ski season still in full force). One of the best perks of the season is the availability of luscious strawberries, and tasty artichokes and asparagus picked from nearby farms, with flavor quality and price that reflects both in-season and local transportation benefits.
Depending on your location, farmers markets and pick-your-own farms will begin offering their wares within the next month or two. There are over 700 farmers markets in California. A wide variety of produce, from the exotic to the humble every-day variety, is available to entice you with its fresh beauty. We here in the West spend more annually on...
- Author: Alec Rosenberg
I have two active young sons. They get plenty of exercise. Their diets, however, can be a challenge. They have different tastes – one could eat breakfast items all day; the other could eat dinner items all day. One likes sugary sweet foods; the other likes salty, fatty foods. My wife is a great cook who makes balanced, nutritious meals, but it’s not easy pleasing everybody. There is one thing we all can agree on: We love fruit.
We can eat fruit throughout the day. It might go with breakfast, with lunch, as a snack or mixed in with a salad at dinner. I think my kids like fruit not only because we make it available and encourage them to eat it, but because they have sampled fresh fruit at farmers markets, watched it grow in...
- Author: Alberto Hauffen
Shopping outdoors and having the chance to freely choose, ask questions, taste, and perhaps haggle a little are some of the reasons for immigrants from Latin America and elsewhere to find farmers markets particularly appealing. Childhood memories of going to open-air markets with their families are probably another big reason for them, but also for many older U.S. born consumers who are becoming regular customers.
Fortunately, as more non-Latinos and non-immigrants discover or re-discover the advantages of buying fresh produce grown by small farmers, we all will have more opportunities to enjoy getting our favorite fruits and vegetables "like we used to."
For my wife, Sylvia, and I is a lot more fun to buy our produce at...
- Author: Penny Leff
Don't take any wooden nickels? When the new Oak Park Farmers' Market in Sacramento opened last month, organizers made sure to have wooden tokens ready for opening day. Farmers' selling at farmers' markets and flea markets all over California will gladly accept wooden nickels, plastic tokens, or paper "market dollars" this summer in exchange for good food.
The Stockton Farmers Market under the crosstown freeway is wide awake at 7 every Saturday morning all year round, crowded with farmers and shoppers conducting a brisk business in fresh local fruits and vegetables, fish, eggs, tofu, flowers and lots more, often talking four or five different languages but managing just fine to communicate with each other. Every Saturday,...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Last Friday afternoon, the sales manager at Produce Express in Sacramento, Jim Mills, drove to Chiam Lee's small farm south of Galt to pick up six cases of the most delicious strawberries you've ever tasted. Mills delivered them to Karen's Bakery in Folsom, a company that needed superb fruit for a charity event.
It used to be, Lee only sold strawberries at his roadside stand, and rarely six cases at a time. But thanks to a connection facilitated by UC, he has a new and much larger market for his produce.
This transaction is just one example of the markets that have been opened in the Sacramento and Fresno areas for farmers of Southeast Asian descent. With funding from the USDA...